Who Toils Most to Go On
by Mousme
Summary: AU following 5.19. Gabriel is given Sam's soul to protect until it can be returned to him. Full summary in the text
1. Prologue —Penance

Title: **Who Toils Most To Go On**

Summary: Written for the **gabriel_bigbang**. AU post 5.19, 'Hammer of the Gods.' Gabriel is brought before God to answer for all that he has done —for good and for evil. He is given one last chance to redeem himself, a task that ranks among the most important his Father has ever entrusted him with: Sam Winchester. Gabriel is confined to Purgatory —a place as changeable as it is dangerous to those not accustomed to its ways— along with the infant soul of the man who brought down the devil himself, tasked with mending it after its long ordeal in the Cage at the hands of Lucifer and Michael. Sam's work on earth is not yet done, and if Gabriel is to have any chance to return to Heaven and be restored, he must help Sam's soul to heal before Death thrusts it back into Sam's body —which still inhabits the surface of the earth— and in the process, maybe learn to heal himself.

Characters: Gabriel, Sam, (Dean & Castiel briefly, guest appearance by God)

Rating: PG-13

Wordcount: 19,574

Disclaimer: If Gabriel belonged to me, let's just say my life wouldn't look like this.

Warnings: Spoilers through 6.11. Serious, massive liberties taken with Christian canon. Swearing. Angst.

Neurotic Author's Note #1: Um. This may well qualify as the weirdest thing I have ever written. I am totally not sure what happened here, but, well, yeah.

Neurotic Author's Note #2: I blame Show for all of this. They had to go and bring up the concept of Purgatory, and I'm sure that what I wrote here has nothing to do with what it looks like in the Show.

Neurotic Author's Note #3: I owe undying thanks to my betas,** kitty_z_finn **and **bellatemple**, without whom this fic would be a total shambles. They stomped on all my errant commas (and believe me, there were a lot of them), pointed out all my spelling, grammar and syntax flaws (oh God), and most importantly told me exactly where the structure of my story fell apart abysmally. Hopefully I have fixed everything that needed fixing. Needless to say, all remaining mistakes are mine.

Neurotic Author's Note #4: Run, do not walk, to the artwork on LiveJournal by **ani_bester**, who went above and beyond the call of duty and produced EIGHT art pieces. Her line work is just gorgeous, and she has a sense of composition like you would not believe! Go forth and lavish praise! Shoo!

Neurotic Author's Note #5: And of course, all my thanks to the wonderful mods of the **gabriel_bigbang** and everyone who has worked tirelessly to make this project a success! Kudos to everyone!

* * *

**Prologue —Penance**

It's almost a relief to find himself before God. To be awash in his Father's presence, even though Gabriel has spent the last several thousand years trying to avoid anything to do with his family. In the end, though, he has always known that there is no escaping God. He's somewhat surprised to find he still holds the form of his vessel, but in a way he's glad, because it's familiar and feels right, even now —he even thinks of himself using male pronouns, as he has for centuries. His grace is a dim, distant thing —almost an abstraction— but he still feels like himself, and he's grateful for that. He holds himself very still and tries not to clench his hands, eyes downcast.

"Thy will be done," he says softly.

God doesn't speak, as such, but words make themselves known nonetheless.

_Do you believe I should punish you, child?_

"Aren't you going to?"

There's expectant silence. God doesn't answer to anyone, especially not his prodigal son.

"Yes."

_And why should you be punished?_

Gabriel has become accustomed to inhabiting a vessel that experiences emotion. His eyes sting and his throat closes up, and for a moment he's too overwhelmed to even contemplate answering.

"Father, please don't... please just tell me what you're going to do."

_Child, I wish you to speak for yourself._

"I left. I forsook my duties, my responsibilities. My family. I turned my back to you, Father, and hid myself from your sight."

_And you think these are the worst of your sins?_

"It was as close as I could come to falling without doing so."

_What of the rest?_

For a moment Gabriel doesn't know what his Father is talking about. What worse sin is there for an angel than to disobey God? Than to fall from grace? He feels a tremor in the air around him, and cold begins to seep into his body, along with a host of memories —sounds and images, scents and textures, and the tremor spreads to his limbs until he's quaking. There is death all around him, the terrified screams of the dying, sobbing and begging. When he looks down his hands are covered in centuries' worth of blood, some old and clotted under his fingernails, some fresh and crimson and dripping from his fingertips.

"Oh, God," he chokes, goes to his knees as tears start spilling down his cheeks.

_These are my creations, my children just as much as you are mine, Gabriel. What think you now of your choices?_

Gabriel can't answer. He deserves death a thousand, a hundred thousand times over. He stays on his knees, hands at his sides, choking on sobs that keep welling up from somewhere so deep inside himself he can't identify what it is.

_Gabriel_.

God is infinitely patient. He's waiting for Gabriel to do something, to say something, but it's been so long since he's been his Father's herald, so long since he's been the embodiment of the Word of God, that Gabriel doesn't know what his Father's will is any longer. All he can find in himself now is an endless font of tears.

_Gabriel, your work is not done._

He looks up, surprised, even though God isn't right there before him, technically. He can't see Him.

"I can't... I can't make this right. I can't bring back the people I've murdered."

_They are my charges now, child. You need not concern yourself with the past, save to learn from it. I see your remorse, and I accept your gift of it. Will you accept your penance?_

For the first time in thousands of years he feels a glimmer of hope. "Yes, please. Anything."

_This is not a charge to be taken lightly, child. This is your responsibility for as long as I choose. Do you understand?_

He swallows hard. "I understand. What do I have to do?"

_Stand, and receive what is given you._

His knees are all but giving out, his legs turned to water, but he pushes himself to his feet, shaking. There's another shimmering feeling, and the blood disappears from his hands. A small bundle appears in his arms, wrapped in a pale yellow blanket, and he almost drops it, catching himself just in time.

_This soul will be returned to its earthly host, when your task is done. You must help restore it to what it was. Your salvation —your continued existence— is inextricably linked with it. Life for life, Gabriel. You must not fail._

He nods wordlessly. Pulling back a corner of the blanket, he's almost surprised to see a baby there —but for the fact that he really ought to have expected it. Life for life, he tells himself, and it all makes sense now. The baby mewls softly, then opens cloudy blue eyes to stare at him, and he feels his heart skip a beat as he recognizes the bright soul he has cradled protectively in his arms.

Sam Winchester.

~SPN~


	2. Part 1 —Purgatory

**Part 1 —Purgatory**

It feels a lot like exile. There is nowhere for a disgraced archangel to go with a newly-reborn soul that won't attract the wrong kinds of attention. Earth is too dangerous, Heaven is unwelcoming, and Hell... well. Gabriel has never been to Purgatory, but it feels fitting enough. After all, Purgatory houses all those creatures that don't belong anywhere else after their death.

Purgatory feels like nothing he's ever experienced before. In fact, it feels like nothing. When he first arrives, his vessel feels more like an ill-fitting suit than it every has before. There is nothing here, and Gabriel has always been happiest when surrounded by the tangible. Sam squirms in his arms, making a discontented noise.

"I guess we're going to need a place to stay, if we're going to be living here," Gabriel says to him. He snaps his fingers out of habit, and is a little startled when he finds himself standing in what appears to be a fully-furnished living room. It's not quite what he had in mind, but beggars can't be choosers.

It's not so different here than it was when he was living in the world. Outside the days pass the same way as they did before, and the seasons change the way he remembers. The calendar hanging on the wall in the kitchen tells him it's May 2nd in this world, though there's no year. He and Sam live in a small white house with blue trim, and when he wishes for curtains he's rewarded with white lace hanging over the windows, letting the afternoon sun drift in while keeping the rest of the world out. It's almost the same, except for the constant feeling of impermanence. The people here speak to him out of necessity, when he chooses to interact with them, but he can't help but feel that they disappear as soon as he turns his back, that the tiny grocery store vanishes once his errands have been run.

He's never been to Purgatory before, although he spent a few afternoons having lively discussions about it with Dante Alighieri back in the day. It's nothing like what the man dreamt up, and certainly nothing like all the lies he told the poor guy during those afternoon talks —because, really, what fun would it have been to tell him that, in truth, he had no idea what he was talking about? Instead, it's rather grey, when he looks too closely at any of it. The colours leech away, leaving nothingness in their wake, and it pulls at something deep inside him that aches so fiercely that he's forced to look away before it overcomes him. It's like staring into the void, as though his mind's eye has gone blind. Sometimes outside, the street vanishes, melts away into fog.

Sam is a sweet-tempered baby. He cries when he's hungry or in need of changing, but otherwise he's quiet, and just watches the world with large blue eyes as though he's already trying to memorize and catalogue its contents. It's hard to remember that this is only a manifestation of Sam's soul, rather than a real baby, just as his own body is no longer truly the vessel he inhabited for so long. Gabriel wonders now what happened to that man —as devout as they came at the time— who had no idea what he was agreeing to when Gabriel asked him for permission to use his body to walk the earth. Wherever he is now, Gabriel hopes it's nice.

"You're lucky, you know," Gabriel tells the tiny soul toward the end of the first day. There's a nursery already set up on the second floor of the white house, with sunflowers painted on the walls. "Not every soul gets a chance like this, to be put back together a second time around. I can't guess at the will of God anymore these days, but if I deserve a shot at redemption, then I guess you deserve one even more."

The baby gurgles, but he can't tell if it understands anything he's said. He doesn't know anything about newborns.

"I didn't think you could do it," he confides. "I didn't think anyone could. It was suicide, and we all knew it, and you went ahead and did it anyway. I still find it hard to believe you succeeded."

The baby gives a sleepy yawn and wriggles in its blanket, and he laughs ruefully.

"Yeah, okay. Maybe you're not really ready to talk about that yet."

Gabriel doesn't know the first thing about taking care of babies —human or otherwise. He's spent several lifetimes leaving what few children he has to their own devices, and now he finds himself entirely at a loss when confronted with this tiny being. The baby is all waving fists and kicking feet and bright, big eyes. It's a beautiful soul really, he finds himself thinking, looking down at it —so bright and full of promise. It looks nothing like what it will become, after twenty-eight years or so of trial and temptation and manipulation by outside forces. He chucks the baby under the chin.

"I guess we'll have to see if we can do better than before, kiddo."

~SPN~

Sam is crying. Howling might be a more accurate word, Gabriel thinks a little desperately. It's been going on for hours, and nothing he's tried has worked so far. The baby's face is red, screwed up with some sort of undefined baby anguish, lashes wet and clumped together with tears. He screams and cries and hiccups when he runs out of breath, only to start up again a few seconds later. He's bigger now, too, and Gabriel's arms ache from holding him and bouncing him and rocking him.

He tries singing, first in English, then in German, then in all the other languages he can think of, but nothing seems to help. He tries Enochian, but that only helps for a moment before the screaming redoubles in intensity. He drops, exhausted, into the armchair in the living room, the baby propped on his lap, still crying.

"Come on, kiddo, work with me, here. You've been pretty good all this time, so what's the fuss about today?" He bounces Sam on his knee, head cradled in his hand. "Come on, shh," he tries, feeling a little as though he might burst into tears himself at any moment.

Nothing. The screaming stops eventually, but Sam keeps crying and hiccupping, tiny limbs flailing as soon as Gabriel stops restraining him. So he tries again, gets up with the baby in his arms, and walks into the kitchen and back up again, patting the tiny back and wondering just how humans do this over and over again. He walks him in circles, debates trying a bottle another time —except that that's obviously not the problem here. It's not even like any of this is real, he thinks angrily. It's just a metaphorical representation of... oh.

Suddenly he feels like a damned idiot. He turns, and checks the calendar in the kitchen, and mentally kicks himself. It's November 2nd, and he really should have seen this coming. He brings up a hand and strokes the baby's head, the hair soft and fine under his fingertips, before walking slowly back to the living room.

"I'm sorry, kiddo, I can't bring her back for you," he tells Sam, rubbing circles on his back. "But it'll get better, you'll see. You're not loved any less when she's gone." He's not really sure what he's saying, but he thinks he can understand why Sam is inconsolable: he's lived without a parent's love too.

He gathers Sam up even closer in his arms, nestles the baby's head against his collarbone and lies back so that Sam can snuggle up against his chest. A few moments later Sam lets out a hiccupping sigh, and the crying stops, leaving Gabriel's ears ringing in the sudden silence.

"There you go," he says softly, still letting his hand rub soothing circles on Sam's back. "There you go. Go to sleep, Sammy. It'll all look better in the morning."

~SPN~

Something comes scratching at the door. Gabriel can hear it snuffling loudly just outside, as well as the scrape of long, sharp claws against the side of the house. He pulls Sam into his arms, and the boy is only too happy for the attention, clinging to him like a very warm limpet. Gabriel carefully walks through the house and sets up wards and barriers before every door, every window. He thinks that he might just be beginning to understand why John Winchester did the things he did.

The windows rattle in their panes, and he thinks he might be hearing the wind pick up outside, shrieking and howling. This may look like the world he left behind, but that's a surface illusion, something he's managed to forget in the months he's spent here. The very air turns malevolent, as the creature's influence makes itself felt in spite of all the protective measures Gabriel has taken. Sam sucks his thumb pensively, cheek against Gabriel's shoulder, apparently unafraid, and for the first time Gabriel wonders if the threat isn't greater to himself than to the child, at least for now. Eliminate the guardian, and the ward becomes easy prey, after all. He double-checks the wards, traces a banishing sigil on the wall just to be sure, and he feels the air around him ripple with spent energy as he does so. He lifts a hand to stroke Sam's head.

"I don't think it's going to be safe around here all that much longer, kiddo."

He doesn't put Sam to bed that night, just lets him fall asleep in his arms as he sits on the sofa. Somehow, the idea of leaving him alone in his crib right now gives Gabriel an unpleasant creeping feeling up his spine. Outside, the night sky glows red and saffron, the air sulphurous and thick. It comes coiling in through the cracks under the doors, filling his nostrils with the noxious scent, but Sam sleeps on unperturbed. Nothing gets inside, though Gabriel can still hear the sounds of snuffling and scratching and scraping, and he holds Sam tightly, as though he might vanish or be pulled away at any moment.

All at once Gabriel finds himself seething with rage. This is _his_ home, after all. How dare that thing, whatever it is, threaten its sanctity? He gets to his feet, careful not to wake the sleeping baby, and stalks to the front door, where the creature has renewed its assault upon the premises. One hand holding Sam firmly in place, he stretches out his arm and

"_Ola loadohi micaolz busd paid!_" he intones quietly, relishing the power that vibrates deep within his core. "Fuck off, you smelly bastard!"

The scratching stops.

Gabriel gives the sleeping baby a smug look. "That showed 'em, didn't it bucko? Guess I still have a little of the old mojo left in me after all. Come on, time for bed. I don't know about you, but after that, I could use a nap."

When he goes out the front door in the morning, though, there are grooves more than two inches deep carved into the wood of the front door, left by claws twice as thick as his fingers.

~SPN~

Gabriel has never considered himself to be sentimental. Angels aren't built for human emotion, and pagan gods are definitely not known for their compassion or caring for human affairs. He's spent millennia flirting with chaos, playing tricks on the other gods, amusing himself at the expense of humans —and if some of them died, well, that was the price they paid for their own hubris, wasn't it? It feels alien, therefore, and more than a little frightening, to find himself coming so close to experiencing what his Father gave to humans without so much as a second thought.

Except that now his hands are clammy, and his heart seems to be lodged somewhere in his throat. He forces himself not to move, to stay exactly where he is, on one knee on the floor.

"Come on, Sammy, you can do it," he says, hoping he sounds encouraging. What does he know about talking to children, anyway?

Sam is standing next to the little coffee table in the living room where he pushed himself up off the floor a moment ago, wearing his favourite overalls with the fire truck on the front and a red t-shirt with a banana stain on the collar left over from a breakfast mishap, and he's staring just past Gabriel as though he can see someone else there, standing just out of sight. And he probably can, Gabriel tells himself. He's still not sure how this whole set-up is meant to work, whether Sam has any memories of his old life at all, whether what he's experiencing is what Gabriel sees.

"Come on," he repeats, and holds out his hand.

Sam lets go of the table, still staring at him, then takes one wobbly step forward, then another, and Gabriel feels a grin spread over his face. There's an unfamiliar warmth in his chest, and it increases as Sam stumbles toward him, an answering smile on his own small face. The kid has dimples even now, at ten months, and a few tiny little teeth that flash every time he smiles. It takes a moment for Gabriel to figure out just what that warm feeling is, and by then Sam has walked the whole six steps to get to him. So he scoops the boy up in his arms, congratulates him, and takes him off to the kitchen for an extra banana as a reward. He figures that eventually they can graduate to chocolate, but for now anything banana-related is the best bribe he can come up with.

Sam turns a year old without any fanfare. Gabriel eats the entire chocolate cake by himself —cake isn't good for babies after all— and decides that this life really isn't so bad. Sam sits in his plastic high chair with turtle decals and beats an erratic tattoo against the white tray with his sippy cup, then looks up at Gabriel and grins like he's just invented music all on his own. Gabriel licks chocolate off his fingers, then motions at him with an index finger.

"Don't look so pleased with yourself. I once convinced an African tribe to drum for two consecutive nights in order to appease me because I was a vengeful god and was going to strike down all their cattle." Sam makes a face and bangs his sippy cup a little more forcefully. "Yeah, okay, not especially nice, but I was impersonating an angry pagan god —they're not meant to be nice." Gabriel purses his lips when Sam bashes the sippy cup so hard against the tray that the lid nearly comes off and grabs it before there's an apple juice-related disaster all over the floor. "Okay, fine, you made your point. Not funny, Uncle Gabe."

He grabs Sam under the armpits, hauls him into the air and swings him around until he kicks and shrieks with delight. When the kid is breathless and dizzy, he settles him on his hip.

"Happy birthday, Sammy."

~SPN~

Sam's first word is 'Dean,' not that that comes as a surprise to Gabriel. He's a little surprised, maybe, because he's pretty sure that babies repeat sounds they hear on a daily basis, but then again, Sam isn't really a baby. He is a late talker, though, which is sort of surprising. The amount that kid talked as an adult, and from all reports when he was younger too, Gabriel figured he'd be talking non-stop by the time he was eight months. Instead, Sam is well over a year old when he utters his first word.

After that, though, it's as though someone opened the floodgates. The first cautious 'Dean?' is followed by new word after new word, and within about two months Sam is stringing the words together to form slightly broken sentences. He develops the habit of running up to Gabriel, grabbing his hand in both of his, and trying to drag him bodily to whatever new thing it is he's discovered that needs identifying, all urgency and big blue eyes.

"Where Dean?" he asks, the day he figures out how to formulate questions.

"Dean isn't here," Gabriel replies, which doesn't answer the question at all, and the glare he gets from Sam tells him that the boy is wise to his slippery ways. He sighs. "I don't know where Dean is. You're just going to have to be patient, and maybe one day you'll see him again, okay?"

Sam sulks. Which Gabriel totally sympathizes with.

"Gabe, where Dean?"

The kid's persistent, Gabriel has to give him that. He blows out his cheeks, pinches the bridge of his nose as he tries to figure out just how to explain to this still-tiny soul that his brother is in a completely different place and time.

"Play with Dean, Gabe?"

"We can't right now, sport. Dean can't come to you right now, but maybe someday we can go to him, okay?"

"No! Want Dean!" Sam's face turns red as it becomes obvious even to his still-developing mind that he's not going to get what he wants, and within seconds he's gone from quiet disappointment to ear-splitting rage.

"Holy… there are dogs that can't hear you, bucko!" Gabriel tries to scoop up the wriggling, kicking bundle into his arms, but to no avail. Sam squirms and hits and even bites him once, all the while keeping up the same eardrum-shattering levels of shrieking. "Sam, calm down, for the love of –okay, poor choice of words."

After ten minutes of this Gabriel gives up any pretence of control and just drops Sam back into his crib to wait for him to exhaust himself out of his tantrum. It takes a lot longer than he imagined it would –Sam's been such a quiet kid that Gabriel kind of allowed himself to be lulled into a false sense of security. He leans in the doorway to the bedroom, arms folded over his chest, and listens as the screaming turns into desolate wailing, then into mournful, hiccupping sobs. It takes a while, but eventually all that's left is the soft sound of Sam sniffling into his blankets, and Gabriel risks peeking over the side of the crib at the blotchy, tear-stained face.

"You done?" There's no answer, so he pushes on. "Okay. You take a nap, sleep the rest of this off, and when you're truly done, we'll have dinner."

"Want Dean."

"Yeah, well, none of us ever get what we really want in life, bucko. That's the absurd tragedy of it all."

~SPN~

One morning the street outside turns red with blood. Gabriel stands on the stoop of the little white house and stares as the pavement liquefies before his eyes and runs dark and crimson. One by one the neighbouring houses –always a little indistinct unless he truly forced himself to look at them– begin to fade into the mist that's always there. Sometimes the mist is so thin he can barely perceive it, and at other times it swirls thick and yellow, coating everything like a blanket and leaving behind a film of corruption, but it's always there, whether or not he can see it.

The river of blood swells, overflowing its banks, and as it begins to lap at the doorstep Gabriel sees it begin to simmer and bubble. Something terrible seethes just beneath the surface, and while once upon a time he would have plunged a hand in to pull it out, now he pulls away from it, checking instinctively over his shoulder to make sure his charge is safe.

Sam is sitting on the living room carpet, playing with a set of Lego blocks, though whatever it is he's making has no recognizable shape as yet. He looks up, perhaps sensing that something unusual is happening, but he says nothing, just stares at Gabriel, as though waiting for him to make it right again.

"Looks like we're going to have to move, kiddo."

He's not surprised when their new home turns out to be a sparsely-furnished motel room. The older Sam gets, the clearer it has become to Gabriel that the world they live in is closely modelled after the one Sam lived in before. It seems only right that Sam should have somewhere familiar to grow up, even if the thought depresses Gabriel beyond words. He has found that, while he can alter the details of the place, the fundaments are beyond his ability to manipulate, fuelled directly by something inherent to Sam. Even if he could change them, he finds he is loath to indulge the idea. It's not his place to change everything in Sam's life, after all, nor to try to change who he's meant to become, no matter the consequences. Gabriel has learned that lesson the hard way, he thinks, looking over at Sam, who has settled contentedly in the center of one of the twin beds, and is grinning at him, dimples out in full force.

"Stay with Daddy and Dean and Gabe," he says, and Gabriel can only nod dumbly, at a loss for words.

~SPN~

Long before Sam turns even four years old, Gabriel has come to the conclusion that he's not the only presence in the boy's life, such as it is. He often catches Sam talking softly to someone else under his breath, sometimes giggling breathlessly at some joke Gabriel can't hear. If Gabriel were human, and Sam a regular human child, he'd probably ascribe it to a vivid imagination –imaginary friends and the like. As it is, he checks very carefully to make sure there aren't any evil forces currently at play in this tiny corner of Purgatory. It's been safe enough so far, but Gabriel is no one's fool. He knows what's lurking in the mists, shrouded from sight, and eventually even this new home will have to be abandoned in favour of safer ground. He thinks he understands why —Sam's life has been a nomadic one, never staying in the same town for more than a few months at a time. Even if Gabriel's reasons for picking up and moving on aren't the same, the end result is.

Purgatory is the place monsters go when they die: his own presence here might well be a testament to that. Purgatory is not the purview of angels, and as a result he never gave the place any thought, indeed never even knew where it was. Only an angel could kill another angel, and their energy simply returned to God when they died. In certain cases, Gabriel heard of the worst of the fallen angels being banished to hell, to languish in eternal torment next to the Cage which held Lucifer prisoner, but those were just stories, never confirmed.

Sam is chattering away happily under his breath to someone Gabriel can't see. He's playing a rather elaborate-looking game involving two matchbox cars racing each other along the floor of the motel room, not even looking up when Gabriel lets himself fall gracelessly onto his bed and switches on the television. When Sam's talking gets too loud to ignore, he turns to look at him.

"Who are you talking to, Sammy?"

He gets a flat look, as though he's lost his mind. "Dean."

"Dean isn't here." Gabriel doesn't know why he feels compelled to say it.

Sam shrugs. "I can see him."

"Can you?" Gabriel sits forward, intrigued in spite of himself. "What's he like?"

That gets him a puzzled look. "I don't know. He's like Dean."

"Does he ever tell you to do things?"

"Yeah," Sam is unconcerned, making one of the cars roll along a frayed piece of carpeting.

"Is it things you don't want to do? Bad things?" God only knows what sort of nefarious creatures are lurking around, and Gabriel suddenly has the mental image of long-dead succubi creeping in the window at night to murmur terrible things in Sammy's ear.

Sam scowls. "He's bossy. I told him that I don't have to do what he tells me this time, only what you tell me, but he doesn't like that." He looks up at Gabriel guilelessly. "He doesn't like you much."

Gabriel snorts. "I'll bet he doesn't."

"Daddy says you're not real."

Gabriel feels a headache building behind his eyes, even though he knows it's not real. It just figures, he thinks bitterly, that he has to compete for Sam's attention with the living memories of John and Dean Winchester. Because his life just isn't hard enough.

~SPN~

"I know why we move all the time."

Sam is sitting curled up in the center of a musty bedspread, knees drawn up to his chest. The bed is old, the posts made of brass, and it creaks and groans whenever anyone sits on it, or moves, or breathes too hard in its direction.

"You do?" Gabriel hasn't exactly made a secret of it, but he's never really bothered to explain what he's doing. Sam's a child, for all that he's just the manifestation of his soul in this place, and he doesn't feel the need to justify or explain himself at all to a boy who's only beginning to learn how to do long division.

Sam reaches under his pillow, and pulls out a battered leather journal. "Dean says I shouldn't have read this, because it's Dad's, but…"

Gabriel blinks. "Where did you get that?"

He gets a shrug in response. "I took it when Dad wasn't looking. He thinks he keeps it hidden, but his hiding places aren't that good. Are monsters real, Gabe?"

Gabriel comes to sit next to him. "What do you think, bucko?"

"Dad says they're real, in his journal. Dad doesn't lie."

"Doesn't he? If he told you monsters aren't real all this time, and he says they are in his journal, that means one of those two things is a lie. Adults lie, Sam. It happens all the time."

"So monsters are real." Sam ducks his head, bangs falling in his eyes. "And Dad hunts them. Dean says he's a superhero, like Batman. He helps people."

Gabriel finds he doesn't have much to say on the subject of John Winchester. He never came across him while he was alive, and he's never had occasion to care about what he was like as a human being, or what his parenting skills were like. He's a little miffed about John's memory insisting that angels aren't real and that Gabriel must therefore be a imaginary friend. He can just imagine John's irritable _"And you're too old for that kind of nonsense, Sammy!"_ But overall he doesn't give the man more than a passing thought every so often.

"You could look at it that way."

Abruptly Sam drops the journal into his lap, and curls up against Gabriel, leaning against his arm. "What if he dies like my mom?"

"He won't."

"How do you know? I mean, something got Mom, and that means something could get Dad, and if something gets Dad, then what's going to happen to us?"

Gabriel has to think about how to answer that. "I know the way I know a lot of things you and your family don't know. I know that your Dad isn't going to die for many, many years, for one thing. So you don't have to worry about that."

"What if you're wrong?"

He rolls his eyes. "I'm never wrong. But on the off-chance that I am, then I'll make sure nothing happens to you. That's what I'm here for, right?"

Sam looks up at him, eyes bright with unshed tears. "Do you promise?"

Gabriel figures he should be used to the unexpected surges of warmth he keeps feeling. They've been happening for years, now, and they surprise him every time. He sighs.

"Yeah, kiddo. I promise."

~SPN~


	3. Part 2 —Protégé

**Part 2 —Protégé**

As Sam's soul grows stronger, it becomes increasingly difficult for Gabriel to keep them both hidden from the other denizens of Purgatory. It's worth it, he thinks, watching it grow from a tiny, wondering spark into a little flame that burns brightly and steadily, even in the darkest of night. Unfortunately, it also makes it a glowing beacon to everything for miles around –or whatever passes for miles in Purgatory.

For a while he takes to walking everywhere with Sam, ignoring the protests about just how embarrassing it is, and how Dean never had to be walked to school and he turned out just fine. There is no school that Gabriel has ever been able to detect. As far as he knows, Sam is always with him, and there are no other people around that he can see. The few people who were there in the beginning, who always felt slightly wrong, are nowhere to be found, and although he doesn't know it for sure, Gabriel suspects that it has something to do with the energy being spent by Sam's soul on rebuilding itself. He long ago figured out that whatever surrounds them stems from Sam, that he himself is something like a conduit, or perhaps a catalyst. Inanimate objects are easy to create, but people are far too complex, too draining, and so he and Sam are alone. Or, rather, Gabriel is alone, and Sam's world is populated by living memories that Gabriel can't see.

Dean is a perplexing presence in Sam's life, one that Gabriel is quite sure he's never going to understand fully. It doesn't help that he can't see or hear him at all, even though of late he's felt something different in the quality of the air around them. Part of him hopes, perhaps in vain, that something of his old power is being restored to him. It's been more than ten years —or what counts as ten years in this place, which might be ten seconds or ten millennia elsewhere for all he knows —since he felt that first spark that allowed him to banish the creature trying to breach his first home with Sam, and for the most part he's tried very hard not to feed the hope that, perhaps, he will recover his grace at the end of all of this.

What's most surprising to him, even after all this time, is that he finds he actually likes Sam. Before this task was given to him, he had never bothered to have feelings for any mortal being –they were beneath his notice, really, unless he was bored and wanted to amuse himself by torturing the ones who got above themselves in life. When Sam and Dean had first crossed his path he had worried slightly, because a pair of hunters could certainly make his life more difficult, but soon the worry had turned to amusement and then delight at the potential mayhem he could wreak at their expense.

Gabriel never bothered to examine his feelings about Sam and Dean after that either —not even when he allowed himself to be dragged, however reluctantly, back into the fray with his brethren. It was almost too difficult just to draw his sword against his brother, which didn't leave much room for anything else, let alone wasting time wondering about two humans –even if they were special and had great destinies and _blah blah blah_. Now, though, he has all the time in the world and then some. And, he has to be honest with himself (he thinks that might kind of be the point, here), Sam's a good kid. It's hard, sometimes, to remember that there's more to it than this –just a kid and his guardian– that there's an end game that even he might not be aware of. It's the most extreme form of arrogance to pretend to know the will of God, and even at his worst Gabriel has never been quite that foolhardy.

Once he manages to take Sam somewhere normal-looking –a park with a baseball diamond– and he lets him tear off at top speed. Gabriel finds himself a seat among the empty bleachers and watches him play his own complicated imaginary games, the only kind available to him here, in this wasteland where he's alone save for a fallen archangel for company. He looks up to see Sam waving madly at him from across the field, waves back and grins in spite of himself.

At that precise moment that he realizes exactly what his Father meant when he spoke of love.

~SPN~

When Sam turns fourteen years old, Gabriel loses him for the first time.

He awakens from a deep sleep, expecting to find himself in the bed in which he lay down, with carefully-constructed sunlight seeping in through the carefully-constructed window of his carefully-constructed apartment. Instead, he's surrounded by nothing but grey. For a moment he wonders if he's gone blind, but a hand held up before his face proves to him that nothing of the sort has happened: he's just not where he expected to be.

He gets to his feet and the mist swirls around him, thick and cloying. There's nothing under his feet, nothing over his head, nothing all around him. It's almost as though the whole world has ceased to exist.

"Sam?" he calls out, and his voice is swallowed by the grey. There's no reply. "Sam! Where are you?"

What happens to a soul when all of physical matter in the world is gone and can't contain it? Sam could be anywhere. He might have dissolved or floated away, any number of a myriad of different ways.

"Sam!"

He wades through the mist as though it was a lake, remembers countless times he's wandered through places like this. They are the interstices of reality, places which consist of nothing but thought, nothing but the simple whim of the gods. He was a god once —or a demi-god. He's created places like this. He's sent countless souls to be lost among the winding trails of nothingness and never once gave them a second thought. He's sent heroes along journeys through the mists, never caring if they came through at all; though he was always a little pleased when they figured out the path, when turned out to be cleverer than he gave them credit for. Now he wonders if this irony isn't a little thick, even for him.

"Sam!"

He doesn't know how long he's been looking. It could be hours or years or centuries. Time has no meaning in this place and he should know that better than most. He could be turning in circles for all he knows, or walking in place on an invisible treadmill. He might never find Sam. He's beginning to tire, even though he never expected that could happen in this place. The fog is all-encompassing and cold, leeching the warmth from his body. Gradually he becomes aware of other presences in the cloying nothing, can feel something malevolent lurking just out of sight, creeping about the edges of his awareness, waiting for him to weaken more. He reaches out, fingers threading through the swirling tendrils of mist and has to fight off a sudden surge of despair that wells up in his chest.

"God, please let me find him. Please," the whisper turns into a prayer, and it feels blessedly natural. "Please, Father... I have to keep him safe."

There's a flicker of warmth then, as though someone struck a match in his chest and he feels a tug on his heart, pulling him definitely in one direction. He glances in the direction he thinks is up, and allows gratitude to suffuse him. "Thank you," he breathes and starts walking again.

He finds Sam curled into a tight ball, hidden away under the mist.

"Sammy, it's me. You okay?"

The boy uncurls slowly and doesn't even correct him on his use of the diminutive, which means he must have been pretty damned terrified. "Everything's gone."

Gabriel reaches down and takes his hand. "I know, but I think we can build it again. The place is changing, that's all. Don't be afraid."

Sam lets Gabriel pull him to his feet, then throws himself against him, wrapping his arms around his waist. "I fell asleep, and when I woke up everything was gone. I couldn't find Dean or Dad or anyone... I thought you were all gone," he chokes.

"Aww, kiddo," he hugs Sam as hard as he can. "I promise, I won't leave you. None of us will, okay? Come on, let's go find a new place to build, okay?"

Sam scrubs at his eyes with the back of his wrist. "Okay."

Gabriel leads him back into the mist.

~SPN~

They move into a cabin in the woods. Sam sulks the entire time, from the moment Gabriel comes up with this admittedly brilliant plan, to the day they arrive at the cabin and Sam discovers it doesn't even have a colour television.

"What are we hunting this time, anyway?"

Gabriel looks at him sharply. "We're not hunting anything."

Sam's expression is sceptical. "Come on. We're in the middle of nowhere in the woods. We have to be hunting something. Dad hasn't said a word, but I can tell Dean's about to explode from excitement, and that means we're hunting something. What is it?"

"Nothing, I'm telling you," Gabriel huffs. "Why is it that hard to believe?"

"We're always hunting something."

He doesn't know what to say to that. He doesn't understand entirely how this world works for Sam. The kid knows who Gabriel is, but he retreats into his own space more and more these days. From what little he says, Gabriel thinks he might be reliving or re-experiencing his old life, or perhaps just remembering it especially vividly, in relevant bits and snatches. Like a really bizarre highlight reel. As far as Gabriel can tell Sam is always there, where he can see him, and yet Sam sometimes doesn't remember things that have happened during the day, replacing the events with ones from his past life instead, or else incorporating their current situation into his memories, twisting them until they make a certain kind of sense. Sometimes he'll go as far as to re-enact some of the memories out loud, which serves only to make Gabriel feel like even more of a spectator than ever.

It's perplexing and not a little troubling for Gabriel to feel as though he's Sam's imaginary friend. He's been feeling stronger too, first after banishing the creature that had come for Sam when he was a toddler, and especially so after they got lost in the mist. It feels almost insulting to be relegated to a secondary role in Sam's life when it's Gabriel who's kept him safe all these years.

What's more troubling is that he still can't see Dean and John the way Sam apparently can. He doesn't understand how Sam can be here and still in that other place, with them and he doesn't like it one bit. It's not that he's jealous of Dean and John. That would be ridiculous, but it is a little galling to be treated as though somehow he's less real than they are, as though he has less of a claim over Sam than they do. Because that's not what it's about, not at all. Sam is his responsibility, decreed by God no less. The fact that Sam's blood relatives still have a claim... well, Gabriel has never really been accustomed to sharing anything with anyone, let alone something like this with people he can't even see. He kind of wishes he could will them away with a snap, like he has almost every other nuisance in his life, but something tells him it's just not that simple.

Sam pulls his knees up to his chest and rests his cheek on them, fiddling with a frayed thread from where his knee has poked a hole through the denim of his jeans. He's grown tall all of a sudden —all elbows and knees and hands and feet that are too large for him— and for the first time in fifteen years it occurs to Gabriel that Sam might be lonely, with only his father, his brother and his semi-imaginary guardian angel for company. He sits next to Sam on the sofa.

"You don't hunt with me Sam, you know that."

Sam shakes his head. "I know," he says quietly, and the desolation in his voice makes a lump form in Gabriel's throat. "I hate having to choose between you all the time."

"You think I'm making you choose?"

"No, I think Dad is making me choose. Every damned day. It's not fair. I hate hunting, I hate all of it. I want us to be normal. Why is that such a bad thing?"

"It's not a bad thing," Gabriel assures him. "But normal is kind of overrated. I've never liked normal myself. It's sort of synonymous with 'boring.'"

"You might not even be real. How am I supposed to be normal when both sides of my family think the other side doesn't exist?"

Gabriel shrugs and decides not to comment on the last declaration. Instead, he says, "I don't think you were ever meant to be normal, bucko."

It's the wrong thing to say. With a glare Sam springs to his feet, disappears into his bedroom and slams the door behind him.

~SPN~

Sam is sixteen when he gets sick. It takes Gabriel entirely by surprise, which is somehow sort of ludicrous, because it's not the first time Sam has been sick —there have been colds and flus and the chicken pox when he was five, and a broken arm when he was twelve. This time though, it's completely different. Sam's been arguing all day with someone —Gabriel assumes it's John— about a hunt. He's protesting, surprisingly enough, that he doesn't want to get left behind. There's something different about this, Gabriel can't help but think, watching the one-sided argument take place. Sam's been on edge since he awoke, and barely acknowledged his presence, entirely engaged with the family that Gabriel can't see and has resigned himself to never seeing for as long as both he and Sam are together. Finally though, Sam turns to him.

"Can't you talk to him?" he asks, eyes bright, filled with hope and unshed tears.

Gabriel shrugs. "He can't hear me, kiddo, you know that."

Sam punches the nearest wall, hard enough that Gabriel worries he's broken his hand. A small piece of plaster falls to the floor, shattering into powder. "Oh, _sorry_," he spits at his unseen interlocutor. "I forgot that the goddamned furniture is more important than me!" He flinches at words that Gabriel can't hear. "Yes, _sir_."

With that, he turns and stalks into his room, not even bothering to shut the door, and Gabriel assumes that means that John and Dean have left.

He pads quietly into the room and sees Sam is lying face down on the bed, hands curled into fists and pulled against his chest in what looks like a very uncomfortable position, and Gabriel can see his shoulders shaking ever so slightly in an attempt to hide the fact that he's crying. He's always had a tendency toward tears, this one, which is something Gabriel wouldn't have guessed about him when he first encountered the Winchesters. They're a hot-headed bunch sure, but he'd never seen Sam cry —unless it was that one time when he'd killed Dean permanently in that parking lot in Broward County.

"Hey bucko," he perches on the end of the bed and wonders, not without a little self-deprecating irony, when he became the Clarence to Sam's George Bailey. "You want to tell me what that was about?"

"Nothing."

"Uh-huh. Apart from nothing?"

"They're leaving me," Sam's voice is muffled by the pillow.

"But they're coming back," he points out reasonably and then promptly asks himself exactly when he became the voice of reason around here. Wonders will never cease. "You know that. And I'm here."

"They always leave," Sam sits up and scrubs at his eyes. "And one day they're never going to come back and what do I do then?" He rests his head in his hands. "I don't want to bury my family, Gabe."

Gabriel surprises himself by reaching over and ruffling Sam's hair. "You won't. Not any time soon, I promise."

Sam flinches at his touch, and Gabriel feels ridiculously wounded at that. "How do you know?"

"I can see the future."

Sam squints at him. "Can you?"

"In a way. I do know none of you are going to die for many years yet." It's a safe enough lie he thinks. After all, 'many years' can mean a lot of things and Sam will be twenty-three when his father dies. Seven years is a decently long time for a human. Sam is still squinting at him, as though he's staring into a bright light and that sets off alarms in Gabriel's head. He hasn't spent this long looking out for the kid to miss that sort of warning sign. "You feeling okay?"

Sam shrugs. "I have a headache," he mutters.

"Yeah? You want to lie down?"

Sam shakes his head. "No. I just... I keep... it keeps getting worse."

"What does?"

The kid bites his lip and looks away. "I don't think any of this is real and I hate it. I want you to be real. I want it all to change and it won't and that means Dad's going to die and Dean... and all of them."

Gabriel feels something cold trickle down his back. "I don't understand, Sam. What do you mean?"

Sam just shrugs again. "You ever get the feeling that you've lived through this all before?"

"Like _déjà vu_?"

Sam flinches. "Yeah. Exactly like that," he says pointedly and Gabriel feels his face heat up. "I think this is... I don't know. I know some of this already. I know _you_, so why wouldn't Dad and Dean be able to see you, and I can? We're supposed to hunt the things people can't see. Creatures that hurt people."

"You can't hunt me, Sam," he says quietly.

"But you hurt people."

Gabriel sighs, nods. "I have, yeah. But that's why I'm here now, to make up for that. That's why we're together."

"So I'm your punishment?" Sam snorts. "Figures."

On impulse, Gabriel moves forward and gathers Sam into his arms, even though the kid is far too old for that sort of thing anymore. "No, kiddo. You're not my punishment. I think you're meant to be my salvation."

~SPN~

The headache turns into a fever not long afterward, a bad one at that. As far as Gabriel can tell, Dean and John are still gone on their imaginary hunt in Sam's imaginary world —he still refuses to believe that he's the imaginary one in all of this— and Sam and he are left alone in their desolate little cabin.

"Is it weird that I remember this?" Sam asks, curled up on his bed, the lights dimmed as far as they'll go. He's sweating, face flushed, one hand shielding his eyes even from the dim light. "I remember this. They left, and everything hurt, and when I woke up I was in the hospital."

Gabriel has no idea what to do with that. "I don't know," he admits. "I'm sort of winging it here. No pun intended."

"What does that mean?"

"Nothing," he says hurriedly. "There's no hospital here, Sam. You're going to have to make do with me. Can you tell me what you remember? What they said was wrong with you?"

"Meningitis," Sam mumbles into his pillow. "I remember. Dean and I looked it up afterward. Dad said it was like practice for researching hunts, so it was okay. My head hurts," he adds, and if there's a definite whine creeping into his voice, Gabriel can't really blame him.

He knows everything there is to know about how humans work, and yet he knows he doesn't understand human suffering, not really. He strokes Sam's forehead, and wonders just what he's supposed to do about this. Sam obviously survived this bout with meningitis as a teenager, but that was in the real world, with a hospital and proper equipment. How it's supposed to translate here, where none of their physical bodies are truly real, is beyond him. Like him, Sam is used to occupying a physical body and Gabriel doesn't know if that makes it better or worse. If Sam thinks his body is dying, will it destroy his soul too?

"Hang in there, Sammy," he murmurs and goes to find a basin and a cloth. When he returns Sam's eyes are closed, but the boy sighs and relaxes ever so slightly when he wipes his face with the cloth and Gabriel feels slightly less useless for it.

Sam's fever worsens after that, until he's whimpering incoherently on the bed, mumbling his brother's name. The only words Gabriel can get out of him other than 'Dean' are 'it hurts,' and damn if that doesn't make something clench unpleasantly inside his chest. So he talks to Sam, presses cold compresses to his forehead and ice packs to the rest of his body in an attempt to cool him down and reassures him that everything's going to be just fine, even though he's sure the kid is beyond hearing him right now. The physical Sam never suffered any repercussions from this that Gabriel knows of, but he's not sure whether or not that will work here and he's leery of taking that risk, but he doesn't know what else he can do. He's only one man, after all and not much of a man at that. Suddenly he stops and laughs at himself. He's been thinking of himself as a man for far too long, because that's how Sam thinks of him, but there's more to him than that and it's high time he remembered it.

Very carefully he gets up out of his chair and moves onto the bed, sitting by Sam's hip. Sam shifts a little, mutters something under his breath with a small sigh, then settles back again when Gabriel strokes his forehead.

"It's okay, Sam," he says quietly. "You just lie quietly, okay? I'm going to fix this." It takes more effort than he thought it would, but when he closes his eyes and concentrates, he can almost feel what it used to be like when he was God's favoured messenger, his herald on earth and in heaven alike. He uses the ghost, the memory of that feeling, allowing it to suffuse him and with a flexing of muscles long disused he unfurls his wings, feeling them stretch gloriously to either side until the tips brush against the walls of the room long before they've reached their natural span. Even at this limited range it feels wonderful to sense them again, their weight and heft, and he allows himself to luxuriate in the sensation for just a moment. Then he leans forward and pulls Sam into his arms, an unresisting weight, and carefully folds his wings around him.

"Just hold on for me, Sam," he says. "You're not meant to leave this world just yet. Trust me on this."

~SPN~

As Sam grows older, starts filling into the physical body that's been built for him in this world, the carefully-constructed universe of Purgatory begins to disintegrate faster and faster around them. Try as he might, Gabriel can't seem to keep anything he's built from crumbling away, and he's forced to expend more and more effort on keeping the prowling inhabitants of Purgatory at bay, rather than focusing on the material aspects of their surroundings. It's worse at night, when he can hear them snorting and growling and hissing, always just out of sight, no matter how quickly he turns to try to spot them. Thus far he's been successful, but they're growing bolder, stronger, and he's not sure how much longer he'll be able to hold out against them.

The more Gabriel concentrates on keeping the external threats at bay, though, the more distant Sam becomes, at least mentally. For what little it's worth, Sam seems genuinely sad about it.

"It just doesn't seem real," he tells Gabriel on a day when he's not locked somewhere inside his own head, talking to his brother or arguing with his father or reliving some long-ago hunt. "It all keeps getting fainter and fainter. What if Dad's right?"

"He's not," Gabriel tells him, but he's no longer sure about that.

"I don't want to lose you," Sam says a little desperately. "You're my only friend except for Dean and he has to be because he's my brother. You're the only person who likes me because of me."

Gabriel looks away. "I'm sorry." Sam's already gone though, his gaze locked on something Gabriel can't see. It was easier when Sam was a child, he thinks. Or at least, when his soul was still a child. There was nothing to it then: just some Lego blocks and some funny stories and a trip to the park. There was no conflict between brothers, no conflict between father and son, no one to constantly tell Sam that what he was seeing wasn't true. At seventeen, Sam is too old for imaginary friends, has been for at least ten years, and so he doesn't ever mention Gabriel out loud to his family, always waits until he's alone before talking to him again.

"Do you think I'm crazy?" he asks one day, when he's making himself a sandwich at the kitchen table. It's such a mundane activity, his tone so normal, that Gabriel is honestly surprised he's not asking him to pass the mayonnaise instead.

"Nope. But then, if I'm really a voice in your head, it would be perfectly normal for me to tell you you're not crazy. Here's a trick," Gabriel tells him. "If you think you're crazy, then you're probably not. It's the people who are convinced they're not crazy that are the ones you need to watch out for."

"I didn't mean you," Sam huffs. "I meant everything else. How can I remember all these hunts that Dad and Dean are going on, before they even happen? And it's not like I'm seeing the future, or anything. I just remember them, like they've already happened."

This isn't the first time they've had this conversation and not for the first time, Gabriel hedges. He's not sure why he's so reluctant to tell Sam that he really has lived through all this before, in a different guise, he just knows that he wants to postpone the moment of truth for as long as he possibly can. The day Sam finds out what's really happening, he thinks, is the day it's all going to go horribly wrong.

Sam puts down his sandwich to look out the window. "The world's melting."

Gabriel sighs. "Is it?"

"I don't want to move again. I hate moving. I hate always being the new kid, always being the freak. I just wish we could pick a spot and settle down, for once. Why does everything always have to change?"

Gabriel moves to the window, sees the trees and the run-down apartment complex across the street begin to blur into an indistinct mass of colour, dripping onto the ground below and forming a puddle. The ceiling begins to drip, splashing white paint onto the blue linoleum of the kitchen floor.

"I know," he says. "But it's not like we have a choice here. Is there anywhere in particular you'd like to go?"

Sam shrugs. "It's not like I have a choice either, is it? Wherever Dad says we're gonna go next, that's where I'll be."

Gabriel looks at his hand, fingers poised to snap them somewhere else. He's always been the one in charge of deciding where they're going to go, or at least that's what he thought. But now he wonders if all the places he's snapped them to in the past haven't been pre-ordained, like everything else in the Winchesters' existence.

~SPN~

A few months before Sam turns eighteen he breaks his leg in three places on a hunt. Gabriel doesn't even see it happen, because as far as he knows Sam has been with him the entire time, except for how he obviously hasn't been. He sits next to Sam on his bed, looking at the pure white cast that extends from the tip of his toes all the way up past his mid-thigh and wonders just how the hell he managed to blink and miss this. He's losing touch with Sam, he thinks, when the boy points out that Dean drove him to the hospital.

"Dad's concussion was too bad, or I guess he would have driven. But Dean does love driving the Impala, so I guess it worked out for him," he remarks, staring at the ceiling. "Dean killed the skinwalker, too. Nailed it in one shot, silver bullet right to the heart. Dad was real proud."

He can hear the bitterness of the unspoken word. John Winchester is never proud of Sam, not within earshot at the very least. Sam has stopped complaining about it, but that doesn't mean he doesn't feel it every minute of every day. Gabriel knows, because he's become little more than Sam's confidant by now. Sam doesn't know everything else that he does on a daily basis, because he can't see it anymore. He can't see Gabriel making the rounds of wherever it is they're staying, marking every entrance, every window, every doorstep. Doesn't hear the banishing rituals, doesn't know what threats Gabriel is keeping from them all. There may be monsters at the door, but they're nothing compared to the demons gnawing at Sam from the inside.

"I applied to go to college," he tells Gabriel, pushing himself up on his elbows. "I didn't even tell Dean, but I think maybe he suspects. Dad thinks it's a waste of time, but I got a letter back from Stanford, before the hunt..." He's waiting for Gabriel to say something.

"What did the letter say?"

Sam's face lights up. "I got in. They want to give me a scholarship. A full ride."

Gabriel's stomach clenches. "That's good."

"Aren't you happy for me?" Sam's face falls, and not for the first time Gabriel feels a little like he just kicked a puppy for being too happy. "I thought at least you would be."

"Of course," Gabriel looks away. "I just... I don't know if I can keep you safe when you're there."

"You can't protect me forever." Gabriel turns to stare at Sam, who's looking back just as intently. He still looks like a child, not fully grown into his body, hazel eyes bright and hopeful, but there's something there now, he thinks, that might not have been there before.

"Maybe not, but I have to try."

Sam just nods.

~SPN~

The next thing Gabriel knows, Sam is gone, and the world has turned grey all around him again.

~SPN~


	4. Part 3 —Palimpsest

**Part 3 —Palimpsest**

The mist swirls around him for much longer this time. He wanders in circles, or perhaps in a straight line, he can't really tell, and none of it seems to matter much anymore. There's no light and no darkness, only a terrible, empty, gnawing feeling in that place inside him that Sam used to occupy. He can't find him at all, no matter how hard he tries. He digs deep inside himself to find that tiny spark of grace that he's used before, but even that avails him nothing. It's as though Sam has been yanked away and hidden from him, no matter how hard he prays to his Father and begs him for help.

There's nothing there but whirling nothingness, as though his mind's eye has gone blank. What little power he had to influence this corner of the universe is gone. He keeps searching though. Calling out Sam's name because he doesn't know what else to do with the time he's been given. He runs for a time, walks when he tires, stumbles and eventually falls to his hands and knees in the swirling grey, then simply crawls forward because there is nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. Gabriel has done everything short of falling from grace in his dozens of lifetimes and that last glimmer of it is the only thing that allows him to cling to the hope that not all is yet lost.

"Sam!"

Eventually he realizes that he is not alone in the empty vastness. There's a soft snuffling sound, muffled at first and distant, followed by a low growl, closer this time. He's already on his knees, half-prostrate before his own failure, but he feels his heart speed up, gripped with sudden fear. He pushes himself to his feet, stumbles forward a little and the growling grows even closer.

"I know you're there," he says into the emptiness. "Show yourself!"

The growling morphs into a feral snarl and out of nowhere invisible fangs slash at his calf muscles. With a cry of pain he goes to one knee, but he keeps looking around, searching for the source of the attack.

It's almost impossible to tell what the creature is that's coming after him. He doesn't know whether Hellhounds have free reign here in Purgatory —outside of Hell, in the real world, they are always controlled by a demon even if at a distance. He still can't see the creature, which makes the point academic, anyway. He doesn't know if it has a name of its own —only that it's large and powerful and angry. Purgatory is filled with its own denizens, and if up until now Gabriel has been kept safe from them, then he thinks it might only be because God ordained it.

"Father, is this what you want?" he whispers, under his breath, even as he listens for the sounds of another attack.

He forces himself to his feet. Gabriel has been many things, but he is first and foremost an archangel, the most deadly and terrifying of God's angels, and he will be damned —and he is aware of the power of that word as he uses it— if he will be brought down by such a creature as this.

He pulls his sword without pausing to wonder how he obtained it and whirls to face his opponent. He is on the threshold of something so vast that it cannot be encompassed, even by him. It's clear to him now that he is standing before a line that he cannot permit this creature to cross, although he can't articulate why he knows this. If it defeats him, then all is lost. Gabriel throws back his head with a delighted cackle, his blood thrumming in his veins.

"You want me, sugar pie?" he taunts the beast. "Come and get me!"

Gabriel can't see his foe, but that doesn't mean he can't sense it, doesn't know where it is. He is a warrior as well as a herald, and fighting an unseen enemy is second nature to him. Just before he plunges his blade into the thing's body, that he truly misses having his trumpet to play, the better to strike terror into the hearts of his enemies. He wades back into the fray, his heart singing with the exhilaration of battles long since forgotten, and loses himself in the joy of fighting a battle he knows he's going to win.

~SPN~

Gabriel is brought back to himself by the stench of fire —of sulphur and charred flesh— permeating the emptiness where he has been fighting for so long. He doesn't know how long he has been fighting off the beings that dwell in this terrible place, only that it feels as though he has been wielding his sword for an eternity, hacking and slashing and stabbing until all of Purgatory is awash in the blood of the impure, all the supernatural creatures that have been banished there, far from the sight of God and man. They snarl and growl at him, try to rend him apart with their fangs and claws, but sometimes they cry as well, and their desolate wails reach into him in a way that all their ferocity can't.

Even as he drives them back, unfurling his wings to their fullest in order to lend weight to his blows, he feels sorry for them, to be thus kept away from everything that is good in the world. He once was one of them, or almost one of them, he remembers. Just because he chose to tread the line of blasphemy so carefully, he escaped their fate —though not entirely, he realizes— and it would have been oh so easy to slip over the edge and tumble into the abyss, to join them a they are now, a pack of starving animals slavering for the light.

"No! Jess!"

He knows the voice, would know it anywhere, recognizes the anguish in it, and the pull of it is irresistible, drawing him toward the fire that he knows is raging just beyond the edges of his sight. He can feel the heat of flames at his back and the creatures retreat, barking and hissing and moaning, as though this fire is too much for even them to bear. He can feel the outermost feathers of his wings begin to scorch, and he's forced to retract them, pulling them closer and finally furling them altogether. He turns his back on his former enemies, confident now that they will not attack him. There is only one way out, and that is through the fire.

"Sam!" he calls out. "Sam, I'm here! Can you hear me?"

The screaming on the other side of the fire grows louder, but there's no answering cry. Gabriel doesn't know what's waiting for him there, only that Sam is still his charge, still his responsibility. Still his. And so without hesitating he wraps his wings around himself like a blanket, and hurls himself headlong into the roaring inferno.

~SPN~

For a long time there's only pain. He remembers things in bits and snatches. Remembers finding Sam on his bed, recoiling in horror as he stared at the ceiling. Remembers a blond girl in a white dress, wreathed in blue and yellow flame, life's blood dripping onto the burning floor. She was already dead, the stench of sulphur in the air so strong that Gabriel almost choked on it. He barely had time to wrap Sam up and shield him as best he could before the fire engulfed the whole world and sent him spiralling into darkness and agony. His wings are burnt, perhaps beyond repair, he realizes as he struggles to find his way out of the darkness. He's no longer in the body of his vessel, at least not in any way he recognizes. He's as close to his old form as he has been in thousands of years and the pain is unlike anything he ever remembers experiencing.

"Gabriel?"

He lets out a moan, but forces himself to stay conscious, to stay present in the darkness, even when all of him simply wants to succumb to the pain. "Sam?"

"Is it you?"

He has to laugh at that, even though it comes out strangled and half-desperate. "Yeah, bucko, it's me."

"Are you all right?"

"Not really, but that's okay. I'm tougher than I look." He wants to curl into a ball and sob, but he's not sure his present form will allow for that.

"Gabriel, where are we?"

"I don't know."

"It's dark... are we dead?"

"We're not dead, Sammy," he gathers his thoughts to himself and with that he feels the first tendrils of reality coming back, flesh and blood and bone, along with a fresh surge of pain in his charred wings. "It's still Purgatory, I think."

"What do you mean, still? And how can it be Purgatory if we're not dead? Where's Jess?"

He thinks of the girl he saw, and only now does it occur to him that she's the first person he's seen in over twenty years, and he has no idea why. "Heaven."

There's a long silence.

"She's been there for a long time, hasn't she?"

He'd shrug, but he doesn't know how anymore. "Yeah, she has."

"How do I get out of here?" Sam's tone has changed subtly. He no longer sounds like the scared, tormented boy who just lost his girlfriend. There's something stronger about him, now, more determined. Gabriel smiles, because if Sam is meant to get out of here, he'll find a way. The only problem is that Gabriel doesn't have the first clue how to help him do that. He's not sure he even wants to.

~SPN~

Sam leaves him after that, although Gabriel is certain that he's still somewhere close by. He can feel Sam like an ache in his chest, or more accurately like a kind of tugging, an ebb and flow of the tide. When Sam is gone, everything goes with him, Gabriel understands that now. There is nothing in Purgatory save what you bring with you.

Humans bring life to the dead places of the universe. They are the spark that his Father wanted for his creation, the crowning glory of all his eternal works. God created them flawed because the flaws are beautiful in themselves, refracting the light and sending it spiralling across the universe, like the reflections from a million shards of broken glass. There are no humans in Purgatory and so there is nothing here to see. There are only the spirits of the thousands, the tens of thousands of the not-quite-damned and not-quite-redeemed. Hell is reserved for humans, just as Heaven is reserved for them. In Hell the demons reign over the human souls, as the angels stand guard over them in Heaven. There's a tidy symmetry to it all, one that he never much bothered to think about before. He wonders at the number of times his brethren have sneered at the demons who gibber and scream down below, called them stains and blights and far, far worse. He doesn't know of a single demon who didn't begin as a human soul, not even Lilith.

He's not sure what it means. If it even means anything. His thoughts swirl in his head in counterpoint to the mist swirling outside of it.

The pain is unrelenting now. He thinks he may have burned up what was left of his wings, his grace, in that last-ditch effort to save Sam. The thought fills him with bitter despair: if he's right, and Sam is reliving every moment of his life on earth, then Gabriel hasn't even begun his work and he has nothing left with which to complete it.

"How am I supposed to see him through this now?" he asks, of no one in particular. He isn't sure that his Father is listening at all. There is no questioning God's will, he has always known this, even when he set about to test his limits in every way he knew how. "I thought he was my responsibility, Father!" he yells suddenly. "Why would you place this burden on me if you won't give me what I need to see it through? I can't even find him," his voice breaks on a sob. "I don't understand..."

He tries to feel behind him with one hand, groping gingerly over his shoulder to feel his shoulder blade where the wing joins with his vessel's body, and a bolt of agony almost brings him to his knees. He clenches his teeth around a whimper. There's no way to ascertain the damage on his own and there is no one else —there has never been anyone else. In the distance, he hears Sam's voice again, crying out his brother's name, over and over, and he realizes exactly what's happening.

"Oh, God. No. No, please don't make me go there now," he sends the prayer up with every ounce of fervour and desperation that he can muster. "Not now, please. Please, anything but this."

There's no answer, but he knows that he has no choice. Not if he truly wants to see this through. He grits his teeth, staggers to his feet, and forces himself to go to Sam, reaching out through the darkness until he finds himself back in that shabby little diner in Broward County, Florida. He hunches over the counter, even the thought of food making him nauseous, but he orders the strawberry syrup and watches as horrified understanding dawns on Sam's face.

"Why would you do this?" He's being shoved against a chain link fence that doesn't exist, a wooden stake pressed against his vessel's Adam's apple. It can't kill him, and Sam knows it can't, but the pain on his face is palpable.

Gabriel winces as his mutilated wings scrape against the fence. "I'm so sorry... I can't take it back."

"You took him from me!"

Sam is breaking apart in his hands and he remembers how powerful he felt the last time he did this. The last time he took this little human soul and cupped it in his palms and tortured it like a child pulling the legs off an insect and left it mutilated and limping, but still alive.

"I can't take it back, I wish I could, Sam. I'm so sorry..."

The apology feels weak, hollow even to his own ears, because both he and Sam know that in less than a day's time Dean will die again, and this time it will be six months before Sam can get him back; six months during which Sam's already torn soul will grow even more tattered, the threads catching on every uneven surface he goes by, shredding itself against the world. Sam lets out a broken sob and shoves him away, stumbles a few paces, and that's just far enough for the mist to come swirling back in.

"Sam..." He's meant to be Sam's protector, entrusted with this charge by his own Father, but he can't protect Sam from this. This was all his doing. He can kid himself about his intentions all he likes, but there's no question here. The truth is that he tortured him for his own amusement, just to see how long it would take him to break, and he took joy in it, at least at first.

_You break my heart, kid._ He'd used Bobby Singer's voice, his body, but the words weren't any less true for it.

"Sam, please."

Gabriel reaches for him, pleading, even though he knows it's useless. The movement intensifies the pain in his wings until it feels as though the bones themselves have caught fire and for one blessed moment he passes out. When he awakens again, the fog is so thick he can barely move, barely breathe, barely think. He can still feel Sam's presence, hears Sam's voice, speaking in low tones to someone he can't see.

"I can't keep lying to him like this, Ruby."

Time is moving faster, now, which can only mean things are coming to a head. Gabriel opens his mouth, although he's not sure what he would even say. How can he warn Sam against Ruby when it's already too late? He can't protect him from any of this, can't move from where he's pinned up against the nothing like a butterfly on a card, wings useless, hollowed out like a dead log. He can feel the mist swirling faster around him, bearing them all inexorably forward. He thinks he can make out other voices in the distance as Sam talks to them, growing more distinct, but it's Sam's voice that always rises above the others, Sam's voice to which he gravitates like a beacon.

"I'm sorry," Sam's voice breaks. "Dean... he's coming."

There's a blinding light, then nothing.

~SPN~

Gabriel can feel his brother's presence everywhere. When Lucifer rises, the earth trembles. Everywhere the Morningstar goes, Gabriel can sense the tremor in the ground, mirrored by the vibrations in his chest, a distant echo of the heavenly music that they both used to hear, oh so long ago. Lucifer is seeking his vessel, tendrils of light snaking out over the earth, probing, feeling their way along like huge tentacles.

Time shifts and shimmers, and while the future is shown to Dean Winchester far away and in another life, Sam is clinging to the vestiges of hope. He watches as, one by one, his friends and allies fall at the hands of Lucifer. Everything blurs together in Gabriel's mind: the past, the present, the yet-to-be-written. He hears Sam talking to that other version of himself, when he was still trying to convince the brothers to take on their roles, to let Destiny play itself out.

Lucifer was the brightest of the archangels, before he fell, and all of the earth takes on a peculiar luminescence when he returns. Gabriel remembers the moment when he broke free of his cage, when he found the paltry replacement vessel that would allow him to roam freely, at least for a while, until Sam Winchester surrendered to the fate that had been ordained for him. Echoing all around Gabriel can hear voices: his brothers fighting amongst themselves. Sounds of anger, jealousy and betrayal. He hears his own voice, first mocking then eager, then frightened, then desperate. He wants nothing more than for his brother to lay down his weapons, to come back home to them, because if Lucifer goes home then maybe, maybe God will take him back as well. He's been alone for so long he doesn't remember what it's like at all to hear the angels' singing all around, and Lucifer has been gone far longer than he.

_But then, I've always known where your heart lies, little brother._

He feels himself die for the second time. Lucifer's blade burning icy-hot in his chest, and he remembers the sorrow in his brother's face, because neither of them had truly meant for it to come to this and yet what choice did they really have? There was no time for weeping then, although he remembers looking at his brother's disintegrating vessel with something like horror and sorrow, of clutching at the blade with both hands and feeling that brilliant electrical charge run through them both. No one before then had ever succeeded in killing an archangel before, but it seemed fitting enough to die at his brother's hand.

The final battle between Michael and Lucifer had seemed inevitable from the get-go. When Destiny plays itself out for a second time and Sam surrenders himself to it, a thrill rushes through Gabriel as nothing turns out the way anyone expected.

~SPN~

_'Surrendered' was the wrong word_, is the first conscious thought that comes into Gabriel's mind. The pain is still terrible, burning into his back, but it's almost bearable now, or perhaps he's merely getting used to it. When he tries to move, his fingers dig into dirt, and the scent of fresh loam fills his nostrils. Everything hurts, the awful burning sensation in his back not easing up in the slightest.

There's something different here, this time around. He shouldn't be able to taste the earth beneath him and the pain here is somehow more real, more tangible. It's not Purgatory. His body is real, heavy, pinning him to the ground. His foot scrapes against a rock as he tries feebly to push himself upright. But his body won't respond —perhaps it's been too long since he's occupied this world, or maybe he's just too badly broken, he's not sure —and so he stays there, face pressed into the unforgiving dirt.

"Holy shit!"

He knows this voice, too, although he hasn't heard it in nearly thirty years. He tries harder to move, to get up, anything, but manages only to utter a moan of pain.

"Gabriel?" He can hear footsteps hurrying closer, and Dean Winchester drops to one knee next to him. "Holy shit," he says again, "it is you! What the hell?" He lays a hand on Gabriel's shoulder and the mere touch sends a bolt of agony searing through his mutilated back. Gabriel jerks, a cry of pain escaping from him. "Oh, God, sorry. Sorry. I just... are you hurt?"

"Where..." he starts, can't finish his sentence.

"This is Bobby Singer's place. Cas... I can't believe it. He said there was something out here, that I should come check. God, I never... we thought you were dead! What with the DVD and Lucifer and... we saw part of it. When you..." Dean's stumbling over his words. "Can you get up? If I help you, I mean. I'll take you to Cas, but I gotta get back to Sam."

"Sam." He tries to turn over, the name reminding him of his purpose. "Have to see Sam."

"Yeah, no offence dude, but you're not going anywhere near my brother. Not now. Come on," Dean grabs his arm, ignoring the pained grunt that it provokes, and hauls him to his feet. "I'll take you inside —hey, no passing out on me, okay? I don't know anything about angel first aid— and Cas can deal with you. And then we'll get you some clothes. Because, let me tell you, dude: awkward."

This time he manages to turn his head enough to look at Dean's rueful expression, and he laughs.

~SPN~

"Gabriel."

He's lying face down on a bed inside Bobby Singer's house. He has a few patchy recollections of being dragged inside, fading in and out of consciousness and now almost all he can see is a faded brown blanket and a wall from which the paint is peeling and bubbling. He's so damned tired.

"Must be Castiel," he murmurs into the blanket. "Only angel who can manage to sound that prissy and disapproving."

There's a quiet sigh, just a quick gust that's gone as fast as it came. "We thought you were dead. Destroyed by Lucifer. I saw your wingspan burnt into the ground. How is it that you are still alive?"

"Dad... gave me a second chance."

There's a soft touch on his shoulder, but instead of the flare of agony he expects, the feeling is cool, soothing almost. "Our Father brought you back?"

He nods. "It was a chance at redemption."

"What..." Castiel suddenly sounds a little choked. "What happened to your wings, Gabriel?"

"I don't know," he can't help but moan a little, tears pricking at his eyes. "There was a fire... I had to pull him out. It's destiny, can't be changed. Burned them away."

There's silence for many long minutes and Gabriel understands it. He'd feel sick too, if he saw one of his brothers with his wings burned away. It's the worst mutilation anyone can inflict on an angel, short of ripping out their grace or destroying it. It must be akin to looking at a dismembered child, something so appalling that it doesn't bear contemplating. He'd feel sick himself at the idea if the pain wasn't robbing him of the ability to do anything other than lie utterly, utterly still and simply try to bear it.

Finally Castiel speaks again. "It's not within my power to heal this, but... I can try to help. Will you let me?"

Gabriel sucks in a breath, then nods jerkily. Anything to end this, even if it means Castiel must perform a gesture more intimate than their relationship warrants. He feels the other angel's hands on his shoulders again, squeezing gently near his neck. Then Castiel flattens his hands and smooths them slowly, excruciatingly gently down Gabriel's back, over the shoulder blades where his wings should be. Gabriel hisses in pain when Castiel's palms come into contact with the burnt stubs of his wing bones, but the pain is already fading under the cool touch and his muscles begin to unclench, one by one. He lets out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding in, eyes closing as Castiel runs his hands all the way down his bare back and back up again, soothing and healing as he goes. He wants to go to sleep under those hands, sleep and maybe never allow himself to wake again, but he doesn't have that luxury. Not yet.

"Sam..."

"What about Sam?"

"Dean said he's here. Is it true?"

There's a moment's hesitation, and he realizes that Castiel is debating whether or not to lie to him. "Yes, he's here. What do you want with him?"

"I have to see him. Make sure he's all right."

"His soul has been returned to him, if that is what you mean."

He shakes his head, then immediately regrets it when the pain returns, intensifying. Castiel lays a hand between his shoulder blades, and he forces himself to relax.

"Please, Castiel, I need to see him."

"I fail to see what you could possibly have to do with Sam now," Castiel says, and Gabriel can all but feel the disapproval radiating off him.

"He's my responsibility," he squeezes his eyes shut, braces his hands to either side of himself and pushes until he's sitting up, though he has to keep his eyes closed against the wave of nausea and dizziness. "God gave it to me. His soul. I had to... I was his custodian."

He hears Castiel suck in a surprised breath. "Our Father entrusted you with Sam's soul?"

He nods. "He gave it to me to keep."

Another silence. "I don't understand," Castiel says finally. "I was given to understand that his soul was in the Cage with Lucifer and Michael, that Death was able to retrieve it."

Gabriel forces his eyes open and Castiel puts a hand out in order to steady him. "I don't know, Cas. I know that his soul was... it was tender when I got it. Raw. It wasn't anything like what it was before. It's such a beautiful soul," he adds with a smile, remembering the flickering light when he first held the baby in his arms, bright and hopeful.

"It was not so when I last saw it." Cas tilts his head.

"I think that was the problem."

"So it was given to you to... mend?"

"I think so. I have to make sure he's all right, Cas. Please let me see him. You have to take me to him. I... there's still something I need to do. The task isn't complete," he says, knowing how poor his explanation sounds, but he can't put it into words, this feeling that he's not finished yet, that Sam still needs him, one last time.

"He's still asleep. There is time yet, and you're weak and in pain," Castiel says reasonably enough for such a young angel, still unused to how the world works. Gabriel think Castiel may have done some growing up while he wasn't looking. "Dean says I should make sure you are clothed before I let you out of this room again," Castiel adds, and Gabriel lets out a surprised bark of laughter, although it hurts right down to his core when he does.

"Yeah, all right. I'll see what I can do about that. Except I pretty much landed as you see me. Got anything I can borrow? Anything except that trench coat, I mean."

"What is wrong with my trench coat?"

Gabriel suppresses a groan. "I just want pants and a shirt, little brother. Help a guy out?"

"Very well," Castiel doesn't seem especially perturbed by Gabriel's disapproval of his trench coat. "I will see what I can find. Perhaps some of Dean's smaller clothes will fit well enough." He pauses. "You should eat."

"I don't need to eat, Castiel, you know that."

Castiel squirms. There's no other word for it. "I'm not sure. I think perhaps you're not entirely... I don't know how much of your grace is left. Before Sam defeated Lucifer, I found I required both rest and nourishment, even though I was not technically human. At least, not for very long. I think you should try to sleep, at least for a little while. I will bring you some clothes and something to eat."

"I need to go to Sam," he insists, but he knows he won't make it three steps unless Castiel helps him. He has never felt this weak and helpless in his entire existence, has never felt pain like this before. It occurs to him that he might be dying, after all this, of all the ironies, but it only increases the urgency of his desire to see Sam again, to feel him warm and solid under his hands, at least once last time.

Castiel huffs impatiently. "I promise I will take you to Sam as soon as I am sure that you are able to stand for more than a few moments at a time. I also promise," he adds when Gabriel tries to protest, "that I will do so before Sam wakens."

He lets his eyes close, too weary to do anything but let his head sink down against his chest. "Okay. But you have to promise."

"I will keep my word, Gabriel."

And that simply has to be enough for now.

~SPN~

Castiel finds him a loose shirt and a pair of cotton pants that Gabriel thinks might usually serve as pajamas. The pain flares bright and hot again when he tries to dress, and Castiel is forced to shoulder the brunt of the work, manhandling him as though he's nothing but an overgrown doll. For the first time in living memory, he's at a disadvantage before this much younger creature, and he definitely doesn't like the feeling of vulnerability.

"I would not take advantage of your change in fortunes," Castiel murmurs, as though reading his thoughts.

"It'd be wrong," he agrees breathlessly, clinging to the last threads of consciousness that keep threatening to escape him.

"But you would have, if our positions had been reversed."

"Probably. But that was before," he adds, then lets out a startled groan as Cas threads one of his arms through the sleeves of the shirt, the movement tugging at the muscles in his back.

Castiel hushes him with a brush of fingers. "I apologize if I caused you pain. It cannot be avoided entirely, but I am doing what I can."

He nods, blinking rapidly to try to dispel the dark spots dancing before his vision. "I know. I know, it's all right, you don't... you don't have to apologize."

"Nonetheless... I wish there was more I could do to remove your pain."

He shakes his head, vision blurring. "Not what I need. You have to take me now, Castiel. It'll be too late soon, and this is important."

Castiel stands. "Very well. Can you walk if I assist you?"

"Won't know until I try."

The pain when Castiel pulls him to his feet is blinding. His knees buckle and tears trickle from the corners of his eyes, but Castiel wraps an arm around his waist, trench coat rustling almost comically as he does so. Sam would have talked him through this, Gabriel thinks, said something reassuring or silly to take his mind off the pain. Sam has never seen him ill or hurt, but he knows the kid like he knows himself now and somehow he has no doubt of his capacity for compassion, for empathy. Maybe that was the problem to begin with: the kid feels too much.

"Are you ready?" Castiel asks, and he sucks in a breath, steels himself, and nods.

The walk down to the panic room takes forever. All Gabriel can manage is a slow, painful shuffle, leaning increasingly heavily on Castiel's arm as they advance, until the younger angel all but has to drag him the last few feet to the heavy door. Gabriel leans against the wall, breathing hard, while Castiel unlocks the door and pulls it open with no apparently effort. Just through the open door he catches sight of a familiar figure lying on a narrow cot against the far wall.

Gabriel puts up a hand to warn Castiel off when it looks as though he's about to come forward again to help. He understands what he has to do now and it's simple enough. He just has to go to Sam. He braces himself against the wall with one hand, locks his knees and takes a first, faltering step forward. The next step is easier and the next even easier than the second and soon he's stumbling toward the bed as though Sam's mere presence is pulling him forward —like a rope has been tethered to his waist. He drops to his knees next to the cot where Sam is lying, looking for all intents and purposes as though he might just have laid down for a quick nap, rather than unconscious because of the unspeakable act that was perpetrated against him.

"Hey bucko," Gabriel rests a hand on his chest, surprised at how warm it feels, rising and falling softly beneath his palm. "Long time no see. You had me worried."

Sam doesn't answer, doesn't so much as stir beneath his touch.

"He has been unconscious this whole time," Castiel says from the door. "The Horseman assured us that the wall he built in Sam's mind will stem the tide for a time, but it will not be permanent."

Gabriel shakes his head. "I didn't think it had been so long..."

"How is it that Sam's soul was with you, when we thought it was in the Cage along with Michael and Lucifer?"

He doesn't know how to answer that. "I don't think it was. Our Father gave it to me after, when it had been flayed almost beyond recognition." He strokes Sam's forehead, suffused with pity for the boy laid out before him. "It had to be reborn. Remade. Otherwise it would have been too damaged to return to his body, even with Death's help. It's a resilient little thing. So full of life."

"I don't understand."

Gabriel looks over his shoulder and smiles through the pain. "It's okay, Cas, neither do I."

~SPN~

"What the fuck are you doing in here?"

Gabriel blinks, straightens from where he's been apparently sprawled over Sam's cot for a few minutes. He's not sure how much time has gone by, only that he's lost at least five or ten minutes. Long enough for Dean to realize what was happening.

"Gabriel asked me to bring him," Castiel explains, as though that will somehow make everything clearer.

"And you just did what he said? Why, because he's an archangel? I thought we had this conversation, Cas. Just because he's a bigger dick than the other ones doesn't mean you have to bend over and—"

"Dean."

"What?" Dean snaps.

"I brought him because I think that his request may have been justified. He has a role to play in this as well. I made a decision —of my _own free will_," Castiel stresses the last three words ever so slightly, and it sends a strange thrill up Gabriel's spine. He doesn't remember the last time an angel ever used those words. Even he never dared to utter them while he was hiding his face from the sight of God. Free will is a gift given to man, and man alone, and it feels terrible and blasphemous and utterly good and right all of a sudden, and he can't begin to wrap his mind around this new feeling.

"No."

"Dean, please listen to reason..." Castiel starts, but Dean interrupts him.

"I said no. That douchebag has made Sam suffer enough, and I won't have him in here, not when Sam... not like this. I just got him back, I don't want that asswipe's face to be the first thing he sees when he wakes up."

"Dean..." Castiel tries again, to no avail.

"Are you all deaf all of a sudden?" Dean is furious. "Get the fuck out, Gabriel, and stay the fuck away from Sam!"

"No..."

They all turn to look at the bed, so startled that it's almost comical. Sam's eyes are open, though they're cloudy with confusion and not a little pain. Gabriel remembers feeling it when Sam screamed and he fumbles for Sam's hand, grabbing hold of it. In a flash Dean is on Sam's other side, leaning over him.

"Sammy?"

Sam smiles weakly. "Dean..."

Dean lets out a choked laugh. "Yeah, it's me, Sammy. God... you okay?"

Sam's gaze flicks to Gabriel. "I can't..." his hand shifts in Gabriel's palm, fingers moving to squeeze his hand. "Where were you? I remember..."

There's a sudden cold, sick feeling in the pit of Gabriel's stomach. This isn't right. Sam shouldn't remember any of it. There's no reason for him to remember any of what happened before. Gabriel can sense the tension in Sam's mind, the forces warring with each other: conflicting memories, his soul battering against the wall that's been erected in his mind. If he closes his eyes and concentrates, Gabriel can feel the fissures forming in the wall, the metaphorical bricks and mortar already beginning to crumble under the onslaught.

"Gabriel..." Sam moans, pushing his head back against the thin mattress of the cot. "Gabriel, please..."

"What's he talking about?" Dean's tone is anxious, already beginning to border on panic.

Castiel moves forward, carefully skirting Gabriel so as not to accidentally hurt him more, and Gabriel feels a flash of gratitude toward him for his solicitude, even when all their attention is focused on Sam. Castiel bends over Sam and places a hand over his chest, just a few inches away from where Gabriel has laced his fingers together with Sam's and lets his palm hover there, an expression of intense concentration on his face.

"There is something wrong," he says finally, more for Dean's benefit than anything else. Dean is the only one in the room who can't feel what's happening inside Sam's mind. "The wall isn't holding."

"What?" Dean grabs hold of Sam's other wrist, wraps his other hand around Sam's fingers. "But he said it would hold... he said it would! A lifetime!" He looks up at Castiel, expression despairing, and Gabriel wants to tell him that that's exactly what you get when you trust the word of a being that's almost as old as God and just as powerful in its own way, but he thinks there may be more to it than this.

Sam moans again, shifting on the bed, eyes rolling up in his head. "Gabriel..."

Dean glares at him. "Why's he keep saying your name. Are you doing something?"

Gabriel shakes his head. "Not doing a thing, bucko. I think that's the problem," he rolls his shoulders against a sudden flare-up of pain. "It's not enough to put up a wall in his mind. Sam's soul is strong... stronger than most," he says slowly, as realization dawns upon him. "Both of your souls are. It's why you've withstood everything that's been thrown at you for so long. That wall can't hold back the part of his soul that remembers hell."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Sam's soul yearns to be whole," Castiel interjects, trying to explain. At least he gets it, Gabriel thinks gratefully. His head aches, stomach churning, and he wonders if this is what it feels like for humans or whether it's something else entirely. "Think of it as being like..." Castiel gropes for words. "Like two very strong magnets, held apart by paper. The pull is too strong, and so they try to touch through the paper, and eventually the friction causes a tear, and the tear becomes a hole..."

"Until the whole paper rips apart," Dean finishes, looking as sick as Gabriel feels.

"You got it," Gabriel has to shift his weight until he's leaning more heavily against the cot, his body impossibly heavy. He can feel something trying to tug free of the restraints of the flesh, trying to regain his former lightness and soar away, but Sam's fingers twist against his, keeping him anchored in place. "The wall's too weak."

"Fuck," Dean looks as though he's been stabbed. "I just... this can't be it. It can't be. I didn't go through all that just to watch him die again! I can't... I won't lose him again. There's got to be something you can do, Cas!"

Castiel shrugs helplessly. "This is beyond my power. All of it has been, from the start. You know that."

"But not beyond mine," Gabriel smiles, then reaches out to stroke Sam's forehead while the kid mumbles incoherently under his breath. "Sam's my responsibility," he murmurs to himself. "I get it now, Father. I think I understand what you wanted from me." He pushes himself to his feet, and his vision whites out from the pain. Dean catches him when his legs threaten to give out.

"Woah. Easy there. No falling over, got it?"

"You're going to have to go," Gabriel tells him, surprised at how weak his own voice sounds. "Just for a minute or two, but you can't see this."

"What? No. Whatever you're going to do, I am damned well staying here and making sure you don't hurt my brother."

Gabriel chuckles, braced against Dean's forearms. The feeling is reassuring, in an odd way, as though he's somehow absorbing some of Dean's strength by sheer virtue of touch. "Sorry, champ. Either you leave, or this can't happen. I swear, I won't hurt him. Cas —brother," he amends, "he can't watch this. I can't control what he'll see and I'll hurt him. This one is your charge, you take care of him."

"No!" Dean's resisting, holding onto him so tightly that Gabriel can feel the boy's fingers digging cruelly into his vessel's flesh. "No, Cas, I have to stay..."

Castiel steps forward, flashes Gabriel a look that's filled with both understanding and sorrow. "Thank you, Gabriel," he says simply, then turns to Dean. "I will explain in a moment. For now, I apologize." Then he brings up his hand swiftly, touches two fingers to Dean's forehead, and they vanish from sight.

~SPN~

Gabriel just manages to keep himself from falling. "Good boy," he murmurs under his breath. Then he looks down at Sam, still fighting an unseen battle in his mind, gently brushes his hair back from where it's plastered to his face with sweat. "Hang in there, kiddo. Just a few more moments." He sits back down on the bed. "We've done this once before, you and me," he says. "Remember? That one time when you were so sick? Think of this the same way."

Sam's eyes snap open. "Gabriel..."

"That's right. I'm going to fix this."

Sam struggles to sit up, but only manages to lift his head a fraction of an inch off his pillow. "How... I remember you. It was like a lifetime of _déjà vu_. How did you... was it a trick?"

He shakes his head. "Not a trick, I promise. You won't ever remember this again, not when I'm done."

"You weren't there in the end," Sam continues as though Gabriel hasn't even spoken. "You weren't... not in the Cage, not then, I remember... but all the other times, even when I couldn't see you. Why am I not... I don't understand," he says weakly, and the expression in his eyes is the same perplexed, petulant look he would get when he was seven years old and couldn't wrap his mind around a math problem. Gabriel laughs in spite of himself and slumps a little where he's sitting, putting a hand on the edge of the cot to keep himself from falling forward.

"It's okay. You're not crazy, but the wall in your mind isn't holding its own anymore. I have to fix it for you. It's the last thing I'm ever going to do, bucko, so I need you not to fight me on this. Can you do that for me?"

"What do you mean, the last thing?" Sam has always been the type to get to the root of the problem, no matter the situation and he's fighting the cacophony in his head now to stare at Gabriel, aware that something is wrong and at the same time hoping what he's hearing isn't true.

"Exactly what it sounds like, Sam. I'm sorry."

"No," Sam's voice has dropped almost below a whisper. "No, you can't... I... you just came back. Just got here." He sounds lost, suddenly frightened. "What am I supposed to do when you're gone?"

"Exactly what you always did before."

Sam squints at him. "Are you real?" The eternal question, the one he posed every time his father and brother questioned Gabriel's existence.

Gabriel smiles. "It doesn't matter, now."

Sam is already fighting the pull of unconsciousness, lips moving to form almost soundless words. "Thank you."

There are only a few angels who have ever voluntarily ripped out their own grace. Lucifer was the first, followed by those who were faithful to him, who could not bring themselves to love God's creations as he'd commanded. There was Annael, who loved His creations so much that she craved nothing more than to become one of them and she was punished thrice over for her disobedience. And now, for the third time, Gabriel reaches into himself to find that last shred of grace that he has been granted for so short a time, and all for the love of the one human whose failings saved the world. His hand closes around the flicker that is the proof of God's love for him and he pulls once, as hard as he can, because if he falters once he won't be able to bring himself to try again and when his grace rips free the pain is indescribable, a thousand times worse than he ever imagined, worse even than having his wings burnt away by demonic fire.

Even though his grace is all but gone, all but extinguished after all this time, he cradles it in both hands, and feels himself slipping free of the bonds of his vessel. Sam's soul is before him again, still shining in spite of how tattered and torn it is. It's still so very beautiful, he thinks with something akin to awe: like sunlight shining through lace on a summer's morning. He can see where the soul is beginning to tear, where the light is tarnished by something so terrible even his own mind cannot encompass it. The soul shivers when he approaches it, but it recognizes him, moves forward to greet him and he feels a surge of love and gratitude and sadness emanating from it as he reaches out.

He lets his grace escape from his hands then, like thread unwinding from a bobbin. It clings to the soul, weaves itself in and out where the soul has been wounded, threading itself around the gaping wound. It's not so much pulling the frayed edges together, he realizes, as simply preventing them from unravelling further, healing and cauterizing, but leaving behind a definitive scar. There is no wall here, Gabriel realizes belatedly. It never was a wall. That was simply an image used to convey what was being done to a human mind that couldn't possibly understand the vast implications of what it meant for a soul like this to be wounded thus. There is no healing to be had, only a small, ineffective attempt to contain the worst of the damage.

In the blink of an eye, the soul vanishes, and Gabriel is alone again, and tired. The tremendous weight he's been carrying all these years has finally lifted, and there is nothing left but exhaustion, nothing but a weariness he never expected to feel. He's old, he thinks, old enough to have earned the right to die in relative peace. He feels himself falling, the last shreds of himself crumbling and coming apart and vanishing away into nothing, and for the first time in his whole life, he feels grateful for the opportunity to cease to exist.

~SPN~


	5. Epilogue —Passage

**Epilogue —Passage**

There's light.

_Gabriel._

Light and love, he's surrounded by it, suffused in it and all the pain has vanished as though it never was. His vessel is gone, but that doesn't mean he has forgotten how to kneel in the presence of God. He wants to laugh and maybe cry a little and he can't tell anymore if he failed or succeeded and none of it really seems to matter anymore. He wants it to _end_.

_Gabriel, is that what you truly want?_

"I don't know anymore. I'm just tired."

_Your grace is not gone, child._

He didn't think it was possible to weep without a vessel, but everything he knows is being proved wrong these days. "Did he make it?"

_Sam Winchester is no longer your responsibility, Gabriel._

"I just left him there. I can't just stop caring!" he feels a surge of anger, like a flame refusing to be extinguished somewhere deep near his core. "I can't just wash my hands of it all, not after all this! Father you can't expect me to—" he falters.

God's laughter surrounds him, and it's clearer and brighter than all the angels' choruses through all time, and that lonely place inside Gabriel aches even more.

_Have you learned, then?_

He chokes. "How can you love them all when loving one of them hurts this much?" He gropes blindly toward his Father, still disoriented by the sudden lack of a physical body. "Father, please... did he make it? Is he all right?"

_Would you like to see for yourself?_

If he still had a physical form, he thinks his knees would have given out. "May I?"

_You may stay here with me, as you are, or you may return._

"I don't want to choose. Not again. Don't send me away, please!"

_I am not sending you away, child. There is no choice that is irrevocable,_ God's voice is filled with amusement and tolerance and love, _and you are never so far from my sight as you think, Gabriel._

"So... all this time?" Gabriel huffs incredulously, can't quite believe that he allowed himself to think that he had successfully escaped from God. The sheer arrogance of it takes his breath away, now. "I can —I can go back, then? Just —just to see if he's all right. It's because of me that he's..." he can't find the words.

_Make your choice._

There is joy in the words that he hasn't felt in five thousand years. Gabriel stands, spreads newly-formed wings until the tips brush against the sky, and chooses.

~SPN~


End file.
